This morning I was up at 6:15am to watch part of the live inauguration broadcast of King Willem-Alexander of my old country. It was still an emotional experience for me, even though I left there fifty four (54) years ago. Now I have a little bit of a king in my life and he is the first king since 1890 for the Netherlands itself!

What struck me most about this ceremony, was the common nature of it. The king makes promises to the States General, who intern promise their support each with an oath to that affect. I suspect that this practice finds its roots dating back to the time that the Dutch provinces elected a ‘City Keeper’ - a first among equals - back in around 1550, starting with Willem of Orange - the Silent.

Anyway, it struck me as a very democratic procedure, one close to the people. And, this is exactly how the royalty functions in the Netherland. I watched part on the Dutch NOS channel and part on BBC, both live broadcasts. The BBC did a good job, but it may have been a feed from the Dutch television. I noted that Prince Charles and Camilla were in attendance, so the feed was probably the BBC!

Last night I managed to post my ‘proto’ web form, which I have called ‘aboutNcontact’. It explains the reason for my website and includes a five item contact form. It still needs some checking procedures, but this is further than I ever got before.

This in particular, because the values from the feedback information get stored in a csv file. Csv stands for comma separated values, and each record has an end of line marker. This makes the file readable for an array routine, enabling efficient data handling.

My date line to finalise the form is May eight, the day I started my Daily Entry recordings back in 2009. What I want to add is the input checking function, so that an email address will be an email address and a name a name and so on.

The sun is waning through at the moment, which is a welcome event. The last day of April today! The year 2013 is moving right along. Last year we had our visitors from Holland here, which was a neat event for Marius, Garda, the young men and myself too.

Last night I printed and read a Globe and Mail article dealing with a cross cast marriage in India. The upper cast people of that village are motivated to commit murder over this event, while the lower cast members feel that their young man crossed a line not to be crossed.

And not unrelated, I remember how disapproving my own parents could be of certain friend I had, while others were most welcome. Even in Canada, there are class differences that are applied at times, mostly in private and not so much in public. You do come across resistances in certain cases, where others are given easy admittance. This is then put down to ‘having connections’, but that often relates to social standing.

This is a soft form of cast practice and it is helpful to recognise that we are dealing with a continuum here and not with a discrete type of behaviour pattern. You can make similar observations about graft and bribery, which always takes place some where else, but only by exception in your own neighbourhood or city council.
[The sun is out in full now!]

Tolerance towards diversity needs to be taught, valued and practiced in our global society, preventing violence and celebrating our differences instead.

I also watched a short clip from Myanmar, where the interviewed taxi driver was adamant about never taking a Muslim passenger. ‘They threaten Buddhism’ was his reason, but with Muslims making up four (4%) percent of the population, just how threatened is this Buddhist?

Such a percent is less than the pollsters treat as significant, so we must be dealing with a different motive mechanism. Prejudice is a label that could be used, but does not explain the cause.

I put this lack of tolerance down to an inability to cope with a stranger. All is peace and quiet for the Buddhist, when all are of the same conviction, the harmony in homogeneity principle. But, humans have to learn to achieve tolerance in diversity and that is much more difficult to do. Moreover, one needs to be taught such an attitude of tolerance and its value system; that is not happening sufficiently in many places. Then, as coping behaviours fall short, violence becomes the alternative if the conflict causing situation will not conform.

Tolerance towards diversity needs to be taught, valued and practiced in our global society, preventing violence and celebrating our differences instead.
<9:24am~